Pride and Prayer

This is in a sermon series based on passages from Luke as Jesus travels from Galilee to Jerusalem. In today’s reading, Jesus tells a parable about two men, one a Pharisee praying that he is grateful to be righteous and effectively leaving no room for God. The other man is a tax collector who throws himself on God’s mercy. In that day, Pharisees were the good, religious people while tax collectors survived off of others, so this is a reversal. One of the questions it raises for us is whether we have a bit of the Pharisee in us – proud, accomplished, but not open to others. It calls us to humility, to a practice of proximity by which we draw close to others.